This is conservatism?

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The Washington Post, as always concerned with fairness and balance, runs a blog called “Right Turn: Jennifer Rubin's Take From a Conservative Perspective.” The blog tells us what The Post regards as conservatism.

How is America, with thousands of strategic and tactical nuclear weapons, scores of warships in the Med, Persian Gulf, Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean, bombers and nuclear subs and land-based missiles able to strike and incinerate Iran within half an hour, threatened by Iran?

Iran has no missile that can reach us, no air force or navy that would survive the first days of war, no nuclear weapons, no bomb-grade uranium from which to build one.

Citing The Associated Press and Times of Israel, Rubin warns us that “Iran has picked 16 new locations for nuclear plants.”

How many nuclear plants does Iran have now? One, Bushehr.

Begun by the Germans under the Shah, Bushehr was not completed until 2011. In their dreams, the Iranians are going to throw up 16 nuclear plants.

Twice Rubin describes our situation today as “scary.”

Remarkable. Our uncles and fathers turned the Empire of the Sun and Third Reich into cinders in four years, and this generation is all wee-weed up over Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

“For all intents and purposes, (Bibi) Netanyahu is now the West's protector,” says Rubin. How so? Because Obama and Chuck Hagel seem to lack the testosterone “to execute a military strike on Iran.”

Yet, according to the Christian Science Monitor, Bibi first warned in 1992 that Iran was on course to get the bomb — in three to five years! And still no bomb.

And Bibi has since been prime minister twice. Why has he not manned up and dealt with Iran himself? Answer: He wants us to do it.

“With regard to Afghanistan, the president is pulling up stakes prematurely,” says Rubin.

We are in the 12th year of war in Afghanistan and about to leave thousands of troops behind when we depart in 2014. What is she talking about?

“In Iraq, the absence of U.S. forces on the ground has ushered in a new round of sectarian violence and opened the door for Iran's growing violence.”

Where to begin. Shia Iran has influence in Iraq because we invaded Iraq, dethroned Sunni Saddam and presided over the rise to power of the Iraqi Shia majority that now tilts to Iran. That was not the doing of Barack Obama, but of people of the same semi-hysterical mindset as Ms. Rubin.

She writes that for the rest of Obama's term, we “are going to have to rely on France, Israel, our superb (albeit underfunded) military and plain old luck to prevent national security catastrophes.” Is she serious?

Undeniably we face challenges. A debt-deficit crisis that could sink our economy. Al-Qaida in the Maghreb, Africa, Arabia, Iraq and Syria. North Korea's nukes. A clash between China and Japan that drags us in. An unstable Pakistan's nuclear arsenal.

But does Iran, a Shia island in a Sunni sea, a country whose major exports, once we get past fossil fuels, are pistachio nuts, carpets and caviar, really pose the greatest national security threat to the world's greatest nation?

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